Nightfall

Descending of German and Hungarian families, Fred Kelemen was born in West-Berlin/Germany.He studied painting, music, philosophy, science of religions and theatre sciences and worked in different theatres as a director’s assistant before he began his studies in directing and cinematography at the German Film & TV Academy Berlin (dffb) from 1989 to 1995. He graduated from the dffb with a diploma as a director and as a cinematographer.

For his diploma film “Fate” he received the German National Film Award in 1995. Since that time, he has made a number of films and videos as director and collaborated as cinematographer with several film directors like Béla Tarr (“Journey to the Plain”, Hungary 1995, “The Man from London”, Hungary/France/Germany 2007, “The Turin Horse”, Hungary, France, USA, Germany 2009/10 ), Rudolf Thome (“The Visible and the Invisible”, Germany 2006), Gariné Torossian (“Stone, Time, Touch”, Canada/Armenia 2005) a. o.

Since 1995 he is working as an assistant professor or giving master classes and lectures at the Centre of Cinematographical Studies of Catalania (C.E.C.C.) in Barcelona/Spain, at the College of Fine Arts (ESBAG) in Geneva/Switzerland, at the Harvard University / USA, at the Kidderminster College / England, at the Latvian Cultural Academy (LKA) in Riga, at the University of Santiago de Chile – Department of the Arts and Sciences of Visual Medias, at the Thammasat University Bangkok/Thailand, at the German Film and TV Academy Berlin (dffb)/Germany, at the Tel Aviv University – Department of Film and Television/Israel and at the National School of Fine Arts (ENBA) Lyon/France.

Since 2000 he directed several plays at different theatres in Germany.Retrospectives of his work had been presented at places like the Anthology Film Archives New York, the Tate Modern London, the Hungarian National Film Theatre Budapest and at cinematheques, film museums and film festivals worldwide. Future retrospectives are planed to be presented in Mexico City/Mexico (2011), Thessaloniki/Greece, Montpellier/France, Vienna/Austria and Moscow/Russia.

With his film production company Kino Kombat Filmmanufactur he produced his film “Krisana”/”Fallen” (co-producer: Laima Freimane/Screen Vision, Latvia, 2005) and he produced or co-produced the films “Moskatchka” by Annett Schütze (co-producer: Laima Freimane/Screen Vision, Latvia, 2005) and “Fragment” by Gyula Maár (producer: Béla Tarr/TTFilmmühely, Hungary, 2007) and “Roku Roka” (“Hand in Hand”) by Jana Marsik (co-producer: Laima Freimane/Screen Visison, Latvia – Jana Marsik Gemany 2008). —fredkelemen.com